David

Not great.

Revisado: 10-11-24

Mostly forgettable. There was a bit toward the end with a dragon and a circus that was pretty funny.

The sex scenes were pretty same-ish and unimaginative. The main character shoves his dick in someone and they have endless insane orgasms. This continues for about five minutes before the author seems to realize he doesn't have anything to say and finalky moves on. Also the female characters suffered from the writer giving them almost no time between their introduction and their professions of love and desire for the protagonist.

Not sure why they brought in a second narrator to read a single chapter, which is unfortunate as the book would have benefitted from a female narrator to handle the female voices. The main narrator was talented, but his female voices were pretty terrible, hence only four stars. It was especially noticeable during the sex scenes, though half of that is down to the awful writing.

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Minimal plot, lots of dull sex

Revisado: 07-27-24

You know the expression, "You can't judge a book by its cover?" That's a lie. There are very talented people whose job is to design book covers in such a way as to give you an idea of what you're in for when you pick it up, I decided to ignore that and give this book a try as the premise sounded interesting. Sadly, the author does almost nothing with it, The idea that this is three books is sad, as it has about enough plot for one book.

A big part of this is that the main character is too powerful. Imagine, if you will, a comic book where Superman runs around beating up purse snatchers. It doesn't work. You need a Lex Luthor (or Brainiac, or Doomsday, or etc) to make it interesting. When your MC is that OP you need big-time challenges to keep it interesting. Such is not the case here. (SPOILERS THAT DON'T MATTER BECAUSE THERE IS NO TENSION FOLLOW IN THE REMAINDER OF THIS PARAGRAPH) Chad meets some thugs...and he punches one into pulp. They come back for revenge, and they all die. The most tension is whether the sheriff will charge him for using excessive force, but that question is immediately dispelled by the sheriff saying that, no, this is fine and he's staying out of it. Eventually, Chad goes up against a dragon and it looks like it might actually be possible for it to defeat him...for about thirty seconds, whereupon he realizes, "Oh man. I'm going to have to TRY for once," and then the dragon dies. Fighting a colossus? What even IS that? Is he going to be able to- oh wait. It's dead.

As for the erotica, don't get me wrong. I like a bit of spice in my fantasy novels in the same way I like some spice in my food. It's a nice addition to a good meal, but I'm not going to drink a bottle of sriracha by itself. In fairness, if I'm going to use this metaphor, the sex in this book would be better compared to ketchup as it lacks any real character or heat. It's not bad, but it all plays out in largely the same fashion. While the female characters have different personalities, once they climb into bed with the MC, they're largely interchangeable. Jessica Threet gives an amazing performance, as always, but the sex scenes read like the author has watched a lot of porn, but never actually had sex. I can't really think of a better way of putting it. Something in the description of the act feels like it's something that is being recounted from observation, not experience.

Additionally, characters the author could have used to make the story more interesting or the world more engaging are left to fester rather than utilized. The opening of the book introduces Chad's friends in his pre-displacement world along with a talking purple kangaroo as his orientation guide to this new life. I have four hours left in this book and I'll update this review if anything changes, but so far, only one of the many characters introduced at the beginning ever turns up again. It's a waste of elements that could have added narrative drama or tension or ANYTHING that might have made this series worth reading.

Thanks to the algorithm, once I read one harem lit series, Audible kept recommending them to me, so this isn't my first foray into the genre. If you want to read something that's worth your time, check out any of the following authors: Bruce Sentar, Daniel Schinhofen, Randi Darren/William D. Arand (same author, all harem fic, but Darren contains explicit sex whereas Arand does not), or the Master Class series by Virgil Knightley and Annabelle Hawthorne. Any book by those listed is a better use of your money than this unimaginative waste of a premise.

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Cross-Title Team-Up

Revisado: 06-09-23

The war between Runner and Zeus finally kicks off! If you don't know who those characters are, you're going to be lost when the second half of the book kicks off.

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Still digging this series.

Revisado: 05-10-23

it's book six people. You know what to expect. This book gives you exactly that. The stakes ramp up, the world develops, and the characters grow to overcome new challenges. You've read five books like this already. You know you're going to read this one.

Unless you haven't read the first five, in which case, why are you reading this? What kind of asshole starts a series on book six? You're going to be seriously confused doing that, especially since they don't read out the character sheet until the end of the story. Go read book one like a normal person or sapient plant creature. (I'm just future-proofing this review for when the trees take over. You can ignore the last bit if that hasn't happened yet. If it has, I want to state for the record that I only cut down trees that were terminally ill and never without their consent.)

Right. Definitely hit the word count requirement somewhere in there. Thanks for reading this. Now go read the book, but with your earballs.

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Avoid this book at all costs.

Revisado: 11-23-22

First, let's cover what's good about this book.  Tess Irondale does an amazing job narrating.

So what doesn't work?  It's tempting to say everything else and call it a day, but I expect potential readers might find that less than helpful, so I'm going to try to deconstruct the mess that is this book in a way that might help explain why it's so bad.  Short version: If I were teaching a high school creative writing class and this had been turned in to me for a grade, I'd say, "B-. Good imagination, some narrative inconsistencies that need to be worked out, and several of those words don't mean what you think they mean.  Overall, a good first draft, but needs work."  That said, this isn't high school and I haven't been handed this for free.  It's a finished book that I was made to pay money for and it is so far from the quality I would expect for such a thing, I feel like my refund should come with earned interest.

First, let's talk about the hammer to the head that is naming conventions in this book.  One of our leads is Fayte Daring, the takeaway being that she is defying the life presented to her, despite the fact that she takes little to no action to achieve her goals, allowing life to instead drop the solutions in her path.  Then we have the lead character Adam Lancer.  He kills things, and that's about it for his personality.  His sister/would-be lover (the author makes it very clear that he's adopted as if this makes it less awkward) is named Eris Purity.  She's a fragile virgin.  That's her whole character in this book.  She exists only to give the main character a reason to play the video game, and the fact that she's his sister by adoption seems completely unmotivated. (In trying to write this review, I looked into the author and their bio mentioned they watch a lot of anime.  I can only assume that's the only reason for this, as it is a trope in anime, so it's in this book.) Eris has "Mortem's Disease."  Literally Death's Disease, which, in case you hadn't guessed by the name, is fatal.  Nevermind that diseases are usually named after the person who first discovered them, an early patient, or a description of the disease's central function (such as the way AIDS stands for Accquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome).  None of this improves as we go on.

Next, there's the way the author will misuse words, ranging from phrasing that communicates the idea but uses words that don't quite work to outright using words to mean something other than their definition.  One example was when a character crossed the room and, "typed a series of buttons."  This strikes the ear like an off note in a melody.  You can "type words," and you can "press buttons," or you can "type WITH buttons," but you can't "type a series of buttons."  It's much like the way one can "pedal a bike," or "ride a bike," but you cannot "ride the pedals."  I know this sounds like a minor thing, but it happened with enough frequency that it made the book difficult to listen to.

The author will also use words to mean entirely the wrong thing, like when he refers to continents being overseen by a goddess and her "parthenon."  The Parthenon is a specific building in Greece.  The word the author is fumbling for here is "pantheon," but they can't seem to find it.

Look, I'm no genius.  I had to look up whether it was "pedal" or "peddle," but that's more effort than I feel went into this book and why it desperately needed an editor to look it over before it went to press.  I looked into the publishing company that let this disaster out the door, wondering how any editor could let so much go by unaddressed, I discovered that they publish almost exclusively (I saw a single book with another author's name on it) writing by this author, I feel safe in saying this was self-published and that there was no editor, no revision, and no second draft.  The author wrote this, published it, and never looked back at it again.

Then there's the dialogue.  No one talks like this.  Here, for reference, is something Fayte asks Adam shortly after meeting him.  Please know that it hurt my brain to transcribe this. "Are you the gamer who, three years ago, rocked the gaming world by consistently defeating the world's best international players?  The one who was given the name the Untouchable Emperor because even the top ranked players in the international power rankings couldn't put a scratch on him?"  Since this is an audiobook and I'm not about to pay for a text copy, I'm guessing at the punctuation.  A normal human being would simply ask, "Are you the Untouchable Emperor?"  In the hands of a competent writer, the narrative voice could then take us through Adam's thoughts on being discovered, or maybe flash back to when he earned the title.  But this author feels the need for the character asking to force feed us the backstory until we choke on it.

Additionally, the wording is so redundant.  The best internationally ranked players that are top ranked on the international player rankings? So much of this could be cleaned up by a competent editor, I feel like it indicates just how much the author didn't care that they couldn't be bothered to take that basic step.

This book feels like it's a cobbled together synthesis of multiple different drafts of the story, each with different back story for Adam, that the author mashed together, like a ball of playdough made from several different colors that don't blend together so much as sit alongside one another forming a roundish shape made of distinct and contrasting parts, and it makes no effort to even try and blend them together.  It's approach to world-building is to state what happened in the past with no motivation, like shoehorning in that this is post-World War III and that Mortem's Disease is the result of radiation and pollution mixing together...somehow.  At this point, why bother coming up with a reason if that's all you're going to give us? The book casually tosses in hints at Adam's past, but never develops them.  For instance, it's mentioned in an aside that Adam is a world-class chef because it was a good way to get close to his assassination targets as no one ever suspects the person preparing their food might be trying to kill them.

That's right!  Our main character was apparently an assassin, and it is mentioned as a casually thrown justification for why he's a great cook.  Also, this is not the masterful assassination plan the author seems to think it is.  This is such an established trope that it would be easier to count the number of Hitman levels that DON'T give you the option to disguise yourself as a chef. Or a waiter. Or a caterer. Or a bartender.  In addition, Adam is 19!  He's been Eris's brother for five years, so that means he was adopted at 14.  Who in the world would hire a 14 year-old to be their head chef?

I could keep going about the problems with this book, but I honestly feel like I'd be wasting my time.  So, let's do a lightning round!
-Women are only ever described based on the effect they have on men like, "She leaned forward in a way that drew the eye to all the right places."
-Fight scenes consist of one or two exchanges of attacks and then become a literal list of numbers (-21, -19, -26, -20).
-Adam and Eris live in the only occupied apartment in the building, despite the fact that it would cost a fortune to heat/power the whole building as they'd need to in order to be able to use the elevators and avoid burst pipes.
-Adam rapidly outpaces other players because he is the only one IN THE WORLD who bothered to do the quests in the game, while everyone else just killed mobs for XP.
-The bet Fayte makes has no clear enforcement mechanism or means by which either party can be held to it.
-Fayte needs to make a lot of money to win her bet and considers selling Adam's magic blood, forgetting she alone can cure one of the few fatal diseases in the world.
-Fayte recognizes Adam because everyone has a unique walk.
-Adam walks like a predator, despite the text describing him as laughing with Eris while pushing her wheelchair.
-No one in the text has any self-control, so Fayte has to wear a mask when she goes out because she's too beautiful to NOT be mobbed and Adam is constantly fighting the urge to screw his terminally ill sister.
-Fayte is introduced to Eris as Adam's sister but routinely refers to her as his lover.
-Untouchable Emperor sounds like something that came out of Google Translate.  It also makes him sound like he's a leper.
-If diagrammed, the plot would be a line running straight across the page and would be slightly higher at the far right.  The climax appears to be Adam reaching level 10.

At this point, I'm writing this review less to inform other and more as an act of therapy. It's an attempt to get all these thoughts out of my head so I can stop screaming them internally. Just getting my money back doesn't feel like enough.  I can never get back the time I lost listening to this book, or the brain cells I lost beating my head against a wall trying to get through this disaster.  Someone somewhere owes an apology not only to me, but the concept of literature.

If there is anything positive one might take away from the book it's this: You know that novel you've been working on? The one you wrote but hesitate to publish because you fear it might be awful? You, dear would-be author, are the only person who should read this book. Compare your work to this. Now consider that this half-assed garbage has, at time of writing, a 4.6 out of 5. I look forward to seeing what you produce, hypothetical author to-be. After all, it can't be worse than this.

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Avoid this book at all costs.

Revisado: 11-23-22

First, let's cover what's good about this book.  Tess Irondale does an amazing job narrating.

So what doesn't work?  It's tempting to say everything else and call it a day, but I expect potential readers might find that less than helpful, so I'm going to try to deconstruct the mess that is this book in a way that might help explain why it's so bad.  Short version: If I were teaching a high school creative writing class and this had been turned in to me for a grade, I'd say, "B-. Good imagination, some narrative inconsistencies that need to be worked out, and several of those words don't mean what you think they mean.  Overall, a good first draft, but needs work."  That said, this isn't high school and I haven't been handed this for free.  It's a finished book that I was made to pay money for and it is so far from the quality I would expect for such a thing, I feel like my refund should come with earned interest.

First, let's talk about the hammer to the head that is naming conventions in this book.  One of our leads is Fayte Daring, the takeaway being that she is defying the life presented to her, despite the fact that she takes little to no action to achieve her goals, allowing life to instead drop the solutions in her path.  Then we have the lead character Adam Lancer.  He kills things, and that's about it for his personality.  His sister/would-be lover (the author makes it very clear that he's adopted as if this makes it less awkward) is named Eris Purity.  She's a fragile virgin.  That's her whole character in this book.  She exists only to give the main character a reason to play the video game, and the fact that she's his sister by adoption seems completely unmotivated. (In trying to write this review, I looked into the author and their bio mentioned they watch a lot of anime.  I can only assume that's the only reason for this, as it is a trope in anime, so it's in this book.) Eris has "Mortem's Disease."  Literally Death's Disease, which, in case you hadn't guessed by the name, is fatal.  Nevermind that diseases are usually named after the person who first discovered them, an early patient, or a description of the disease's central function (such as the way AIDS stands for Accquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome).  None of this improves as we go on.

Next, there's the way the author will misuse words, ranging from phrasing that communicates the idea but uses words that don't quite work to outright using words to mean something other than their definition.  One example was when a character crossed the room and, "typed a series of buttons."  This strikes the ear like an off note in a melody.  You can "type words," and you can "press buttons," or you can "type WITH buttons," but you can't "type a series of buttons."  It's much like the way one can "pedal a bike," or "ride a bike," but you cannot "ride the pedals."  I know this sounds like a minor thing, but it happened with enough frequency that it made the book difficult to listen to.

The author will also use words to mean entirely the wrong thing, like when he refers to continents being overseen by a goddess and her "parthenon."  The Parthenon is a specific building in Greece.  The word the author is fumbling for here is "pantheon," but they can't seem to find it.

Look, I'm no genius.  I had to look up whether it was "pedal" or "peddle," but that's more effort than I feel went into this book and why it desperately needed an editor to look it over before it went to press.  I looked into the publishing company that let this disaster out the door, wondering how any editor could let so much go by unaddressed, I discovered that they publish almost exclusively (I saw a single book with another author's name on it) writing by this author, I feel safe in saying this was self-published and that there was no editor, no revision, and no second draft.  The author wrote this, published it, and never looked back at it again.

Then there's the dialogue.  No one talks like this.  Here, for reference, is something Fayte asks Adam shortly after meeting him.  Please know that it hurt my brain to transcribe this. "Are you the gamer who, three years ago, rocked the gaming world by consistently defeating the world's best international players?  The one who was given the name the Untouchable Emperor because even the top ranked players in the international power rankings couldn't put a scratch on him?"  Since this is an audiobook and I'm not about to pay for a text copy, I'm guessing at the punctuation.  A normal human being would simply ask, "Are you the Untouchable Emperor?"  In the hands of a competent writer, the narrative voice could then take us through Adam's thoughts on being discovered, or maybe flash back to when he earned the title.  But this author feels the need for the character asking to force feed us the backstory until we choke on it.

Additionally, the wording is so redundant.  The best internationally ranked players that are top ranked on the international player rankings? So much of this could be cleaned up by a competent editor, I feel like it indicates just how much the author didn't care that they couldn't be bothered to take that basic step.

This book feels like it's a cobbled together synthesis of multiple different drafts of the story, each with different back story for Adam, that the author mashed together, like a ball of playdough made from several different colors that don't blend together so much as sit alongside one another forming a roundish shape made of distinct and contrasting parts, and it makes no effort to even try and blend them together.  It's approach to world-building is to state what happened in the past with no motivation, like shoehorning in that this is post-World War III and that Mortem's Disease is the result of radiation and pollution mixing together...somehow.  At this point, why bother coming up with a reason if that's all you're going to give us? The book casually tosses in hints at Adam's past, but never develops them.  For instance, it's mentioned in an aside that Adam is a world-class chef because it was a good way to get close to his assassination targets as no one ever suspects the person preparing their food might be trying to kill them.

That's right!  Our main character was apparently an assassin, and it is mentioned as a casually thrown justification for why he's a great cook.  Also, this is not the masterful assassination plan the author seems to think it is.  This is such an established trope that it would be easier to count the number of Hitman levels that DON'T give you the option to disguise yourself as a chef. Or a waiter. Or a caterer. Or a bartender.  In addition, Adam is 19!  He's been Eris's brother for five years, so that means he was adopted at 14.  Who in the world would hire a 14 year-old to be their head chef?

I could keep going about the problems with this book, but I honestly feel like I'd be wasting my time.  So, let's do a lightning round!
-Women are only ever described based on the effect they have on men like, "She leaned forward in a way that drew the eye to all the right places."
-Fight scenes consist of one or two exchanges of attacks and then become a literal list of numbers (-21, -19, -26, -20).
-Adam and Eris live in the only occupied apartment in the building, despite the fact that it would cost a fortune to heat/power the whole building as they'd need to in order to be able to use the elevators and avoid burst pipes.
-Adam rapidly outpaces other players because he is the only one IN THE WORLD who bothered to do the quests in the game, while everyone else just killed mobs for XP.
-The bet Fayte makes has no clear enforcement mechanism or means by which either party can be held to it.
-Fayte needs to make a lot of money to win her bet and considers selling Adam's magic blood, forgetting she alone can cure one of the few fatal diseases in the world.
-Fayte recognizes Adam because everyone has a unique walk.
-Adam walks like a predator, despite the text describing him as laughing with Eris while pushing her wheelchair.
-No one in the text has any self-control, so Fayte has to wear a mask when she goes out because she's too beautiful to NOT be mobbed and Adam is constantly fighting the urge to screw his terminally ill sister.
-Fayte is introduced to Eris as Adam's sister but routinely refers to her as his lover.
-Untouchable Emperor sounds like something that came out of Google Translate.  It also makes him sound like he's a leper.
-If diagrammed, the plot would be a line running straight across the page and would be slightly higher at the far right.  The climax appears to be Adam reaching level 10.

At this point, I'm writing this review less to inform other and more as an act of therapy. It's an attempt to get all these thoughts out of my head so I can stop screaming them internally. Just getting my money back doesn't feel like enough.  I can never get back the time I lost listening to this book, or the brain cells I lost beating my head against a wall trying to get through this disaster.  Someone somewhere owes an apology not only to me, but the concept of literature.

If there is anything positive one might take away from the book it's this: You know that novel you've been working on? The one you wrote but hesitate to publish because you fear it might be awful? You, dear would-be author, are the only person who should read this book. Compare your work to this. Now consider that this half-assed garbage has, at time of writing, a 4.6 out of 5. I look forward to seeing what you produce, hypothetical author to-be. After all, it can't be worse than this.

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Amazing LitRPG with complex characters

Revisado: 10-12-22

This series was amazing. I was hesitant to start it as I've encountered a number of books that were hyper-lazy LitRPG, but this series really focuses on the characters rather than wasting half the book reading me stat sheets. Of you are uncomfortable with LGBTQ issues, this is not the series for you. If you're willing to consider what it might be like to be a man playing as a female character in a fully impressive VRMMO, then you're fully capable of enjoying this character-driven series that has gotten me more emotionally invested in the characters despite my quibbling objections to the established game structure, than any of the other similar series I've engaged with, and they are legion, to date.

That was one hell of a run-on sentence, but I REGRET NOTHING! READ THIS SERIES!

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The first book was amazing! Then...

Revisado: 06-16-22

Book one was fantastic. Guy makes a wish and a genie turns his college into a DnD world. So you've got the usual college stuff but with a fantasy twist. Instead of Calculus 220, you've got Intro to Treasure Identification. Great stuff! The generic end of semester college games featured in so many movies are now a series of dungeons and battles. So much fun!

After that, the characters leave the college for reasons and it becomes another generic fantasy harem series. And like so many harem series it really overloads the story with characters to the extent that it becomes hard to keep track and you see less and less of the characters you got to know early in the series. Also, the main character's obsession with the size of his dick, which increases every time his Charisma stat goes up because...sure, was a bit cringe-inducing. You're a kick-ass barbarian with multiple lovers, none of whom have complained about this! You seem strangely insecure about the matter and it's weird.

Andrea Parseau is amazing as always. Her voice is fantastic and she does an amazing job juggling the ever expanding cast such that you never have to wait for the book to tell you who's doing the speaking. I've never heard her give a bad performance. Truly one of the best there is at what she does.

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Still really enjoying the series.

Revisado: 12-08-21

Gets a little bogged down in game mechanics at times, but it never lasts long. And you can conveniently skip the repeated sections on character stats and info as they're always at the end of a chapter.

Does a good job of continuing to raise the stakes despite the fact the characters can't read die. Than again, there are things worse than death.

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FINALLY!

Revisado: 11-03-21

I have been waiting so long for this. FINALLY it is here. This is so awesome! Just like the radio serials of old.

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